Yama OSRS Guide: Gear, Contracts, Dossier and Drops

Overview

Yama is a demonic boss at the bottom of the Chasm of Fire in Shayzien, unlocked by A Kingdom Divided, and you fight him solo or as a duo for oathplate armour and the soulflame horn. The base fight is free and repeatable; contracts are optional items that make him harder in exchange for guaranteed rewards. The standard setup is melee with Emberlight plus a magic switch for the Judge phases, and ranged is not recommended because of his very high ranged defence.

He was also the encounter that introduced the contract system. After the quest you speak to the Voice of Yama, and Yama offers a contract to fight an inhibited form of himself. That first contract unlocks the fight; the tradeable ones only modify it. Several of them are comparable in difficulty to the awakened Desert Treasure II variants.

Jagex designed the base fight as a step up from the Forgotten Four, the post-Desert Treasure II bosses. It emphasises movement and prayer switching rather than raw damage output, and it rewards that with oathplate armour (best-in-slot slash armour) and the soulflame horn.

Requirements and Access

The only hard gate is a quest. Everything else is a recommendation, and the base fight can be repeated as often as you like: Yama can be challenged again immediately after a kill.

That subsidy is worth using deliberately. Contracts are a separate, optional layer on top. Those are consumed per attempt and are where the real cost of failure sits.

Getting There

Yama is fought in his own domain, reached through the Chasm of Fire in Shayzien. The route is short once you know it.

1. 1

   Complete A Kingdom Divided if you have not already.

2. 2

   Travel to the Chasm of Fire and descend to the bottom floor.

3. 3

   Speak to the Voice of Yama, who teleports you to Yama's domain.

4. 4

   Accept the contract Yama offers, which grants you the ability to challenge his inhibited form.

5. 5

   If you want a modified fight, show him a contract item before starting; otherwise the base fight is repeatable for free.

• Chasm teleport scroll: lands you on the bottom floor next to the Voice of Yama. They drop from Yama and from dossiers.
• Fairy ring DJR, then run north-west to the chasm. With 83 Agility, slide down the chain by the entrance; with 73, use the platform edge north of the entrance and jump the gaps to the lift.
• The History and Hearsay teleport (Kharedst's memoirs or the book of the dead) to the Graveyard of Heroes, then run north.

Because deaths return you to the Voice of Yama rather than your respawn point, your return route after a death is already short. Set your supply restock plan rather than your travel plan.

Recommended Stats

Yama is an endgame encounter, and these are the levels the wiki's strategy page recommends. Below them, you are fighting the mechanics and your own damage output at the same time.

Gear Setups: Budget, Mid and Best in Slot

Yama is a melee fight with a magic switch. His demonbane weakness makes Emberlight the best weapon, and a purging staff handles the voidflares. Ranged is the style to leave in the bank: his ranged defence is +333 against light and heavy ammunition and +220 against standard, so the twisted bow that tops most lists does little here.

Emberlight is best because Yama takes 20% more from demonbane effects than other demons, so its bonus becomes 84% accuracy and damage instead of 70%. Both Emberlight and the purging staff need While Guthix Sleeps. If you mage the whole fight, bring a fast melee weapon such as an inquisitor's mace or Emberlight for the Judge.

Oathplate armour comes from Yama itself, which means the boss partly funds its own gear progression once you can clear it.

Inventory and Supplies

Two things on this list are Yama-specific rather than generic boss kit: poison cover and the magic switch. Skipping either is a common reason a first attempt fails.

• 2-5 super restores or sanfew serums. Sanfews cover his poison, which starts at 20, the highest value in the game.
• Cooked karambwans or better food in the remaining slots.
• A magic switch: a purging staff and high magic damage gear for the voidflares. The Judge always prays ranged and reacts to your last style, so melee alone stalls the sub-fight.
• The soulflame horn and an elder maul for Defence reduction. The wiki marks these as optional in a duo.
• A Saradomin godsword to heal on the Judge.
• A divine rune pouch with cosmic, soul, death and blood runes, plus fire runes, for thralls, Death Charge, Mark of Darkness and Dark Demonbane.
• A one-click bank teleport, and a dramen or lunar staff for the DJR fairy ring if you have not finished the Lumbridge & Draynor elite diary.
• An optional surge potion.

He is fully immune to poison and venom himself, and immune to cannons, so leave those out. Water is his elemental weakness at 50%, which is worth knowing if you are building a magic setup.

Mechanics You Have to Respect

Yama uses all three combat styles: melee with his axe, ranged as engulfing shadow, and magic as fire. The single most useful thing to understand is that he reads the weapon you are holding and behaves differently because of it.

Two more details worth knowing before you commit a setup. His auto-attacks alternate styles in the final phase, so if he used shadow last hit, the next is magic, and that regularity is exploitable. And his ranged and magic attacks pierce prayer slightly in the final phase, so the earlier 'prayer fully blocks it' rule stops being exactly true right at the end.

Fight Strategy: Approach and Kill Plan

The base fight has a fixed shape: two phase transitions with a Judge fight in between each, then a static final phase. Plan around those three landmarks rather than improvising.

1. 1

   Enter with full health, full prayer and a protection prayer already active.

2. 2

   Decide your weapon before you engage.

   Melee pulls him to you; magic or ranged keeps him at distance and changes his magic defence.

3. 3

   Switch protection prayer on his ranged and magic animations, which are fully blocked.

   Do not try to pray off the melee swing; it hits through prayer.

4. 4

   Step onto the matching glyph for shadow and fire attacks.

   Glyphs are the only full block for those, and standing in the open is a choice.

5. 5

   Ease off damage as you approach 66.6%.

   He gains 50% damage resistance between hitting the threshold and the teleport, so those hits are wasted.

6. 6

   In the Judge pocket, alternate melee and magic.

   It prays reactively against your last attack and always prays ranged, so a single style stalls.

7. 7

   Repeat at 33.3%, then commit to a position for the final phase.

8. 8

   In the final phase, kill flares on sight.

   They damage you and heal Yama, and ignoring them is the usual reason a near-complete kill falls apart.

Deaths return you to the Voice of Yama with your grave in the same room, and your reclamation fee is cut by 75% until your tenth kill. Use those ten attempts to learn the phase transitions rather than to bank a safe kill.

Contracts: The Harder Versions of the Fight

Contracts are the reason this boss has long-term depth. They work like awakener's orbs: tradeable, consumed on the attempt, and they modify the encounter in exchange for a guaranteed reward. Acquisition contracts come only from dossiers; the sigil contracts also drop from Yama's demons.

The wiki notes that some of these sit at roughly awakened Desert Treasure II difficulty. Treat them as a separate skill ceiling rather than a way to farm the base fight faster.

Two rules are worth committing to memory. The resource and pet contracts allow a duo as long as one of you holds the contract; the equipment and sigil contracts must be done alone. And the sigil and pet contracts are refunded on a successful kill, so a clean clear costs you nothing but supplies.

Five sigil pieces combine into the purifying sigil, which unlocks Radiant Oathplate, the white variant. That is the actual completionist goal behind the contract system, and it requires clearing five different solo-only modified fights.

Solo Versus Duo

Yama can be fought alone or with one other player who has signed the initial contract, and his stats are identical either way. That is unusual, since most group bosses scale, and it means a duo is straightforwardly easier rather than a different fight.

He only focuses one player at a time, though he can switch aggression between the two of you. The practical effect is that a duo halves the prayer-switching burden while you learn, and the Judge phases go faster because you can cover melee and magic between you rather than switching solo.

The catch is his melee swing, which hits everyone within three tiles of his target. Positioning discipline matters more in a duo, not less. And contracts change the rules: each states its own party requirement, so read it before inviting a partner.

For other endgame team content at this level, see best group bosses and the bosses index.

Common Mistakes and What Actually Kills You

The base fight is cheap to fail while you are under ten kills, so the mistakes worth naming are the ones that keep repeating rather than the ones that cost you gold.

• Bringing one combat style. The Judge phases are built specifically to punish this and you will simply be unable to progress efficiently.
• Praying against the melee swing. It hits through prayer; the answer is distance, not a prayer switch.
• Standing within three tiles of your partner's position when he is targeting them. His melee splashes across that radius.
• Trying to pray off shadow and fire attacks instead of stepping onto the matching glyph.
• Pushing damage into the 66.6% and 33.3% thresholds while he holds 50% damage resistance.
• Ignoring flares in the final phase and watching him heal back out of kill range.
• Skipping antipoison and then attributing the health loss to mechanics you did not misplay.
• Drifting in and out of melee range in the final phase, which triggers both of his behaviour patterns instead of one.
• Spending a contract on a fight you have not yet cleared unmodified.

Drops Worth Knowing

Oathplate is best-in-slot slash armour and the soulflame horn has a special attack that boosts allies' next melee attack. The dossier is arguably the most interesting drop, since it opens into contracts, chasm teleport scrolls or the scroll that upgrades Death Charge.

The drop roll is a cascade rather than a single table, and it is worth understanding because it explains why contribution matters. Jagex published these rates: if you dealt less than 375 damage (15% of his health), you only roll the junk table. Otherwise you roll 1/120 for the unique table, scaled by contribution, and a success there is 3/5 for an oathplate piece and 2/5 for the soulflame horn. Failing that, 1/12 for the dossier, then 1/30 for a forgotten lockbox, then 1/15 for 12 oathplate shards, then the standard table. Tertiary rolls are separate: 1/2,500 for Yami and 1/30 for an elite clue.

What the Yama Dossier Gives

The dossier drops at 1/12 on the loot cascade, scaled by your contribution, and Yama is its only source. It is untradeable. Open it and you get one of the rewards below, which makes it the main way to get acquisition contracts.

The rite of vile transference is the Death Charge upgrade. Reading it consumes the scroll and permanently makes Death Charge restore special attack energy from two targets per cast instead of one. The first dossier you open with at least 100 Yama kills is guaranteed to give it; if you already have it, that roll becomes 15-18 chasm teleport scrolls instead. The scrolls take you straight to the Voice of Yama on the bottom floor.

Combat Achievements

Yama has 11 Combat Achievement tasks worth 55 points, all Elite, Master or Grandmaster. They arrived shortly after release, and as with all recent content they emphasise clean mechanic handling and restricted completions rather than speed alone.

One planning note specific to Yama: contracted fights are not tracked separately the way awakened Desert Treasure II kills are. Check the exact task list in-game before building an attempt around it, since the task set has been adjusted post-release.

Ironman Notes

Every oathplate piece has to come from your own kills. At full contribution the unique roll is 1/120 and 3/5 of those are oathplate, so any piece drops about once per 200 solo kills and a specific piece at 1/600. Shards come 12 at a time on a 1/15 roll further down the cascade, and a piece needs 450 shards plus 2,520 crushed infernal shale at 83 Smithing, which the wiki puts at roughly 557 solo kills of shards per piece.

Each trip on the wiki's setups takes 2-5 super restores or sanfew serums, and sanfews are the usual answer to his 20 poison. Super restores need 63 Herblore, snapdragons and red spiders' eggs. Sanfews need 65 Herblore, partial completion of Zogre Flesh Eaters, unicorn horn dust, nail beast nails and snake weed, which an iron picks from the marshy jungle vines south-west of Tai Bwo Wannai. Snapdragon needs 62 Farming, so regular snapdragon herb runs are what keep the trips going.

One iron-specific rule to know: on the familiar acquisition contract, a duo normally lets both players benefit from whoever's contract was used, but an ironman has to supply their own contract to get the increased pet rate. Do not plan a duo around a partner's contract.

FAQ

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